Tibor Navracsics, the minister of public administration and regional development, said the Holocaust was "an inexplicable, unjustifiable and unacceptable low point" of Europe's civilization.
Speaking at a commemoration marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day at Budapest's Pava Street Holocaust Memorial Centre on Monday, Minister Navracsics said in his speech that the Holocaust had been "a tragedy for not only European Jews but for the whole of civilisation... It is inexplicable why Europe, the continent of Christianity and enlightenment, could tolerate the Holocaust in the middle of the 20th century."
Navracsics noted that the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp had been liberated on this day 80 years ago, adding that "it was an important day, a milestone, but not a start or end date in terms of the developments of the Holocaust." He said anti-Semitism, culminating in "a devastating campaign", had gathered strength in the 1920s and 30s. And the effects of the Holocaust, he said, resulted in "decades of half-broken, derailed lives," he said.